Greedy City Targets Grantville

On his website, Teyssier posts a letter he wrote to the city council on March 19 objecting to the Grantville redevelopment plan and "the covert manner in which the City has proceeded thus far." Included in the letter is a critique of the initial feasibility study by the Rosenow Spevecek Group. Among other complaints, the critique counters the study's assertion that 80 percent of the study area is urbanized (California's Health and Safety Code requires this percentage in order to qualify an area for redevelopment). To reach that percentage, according to Teyssier, the feasibility study included as "urbanized" a large sand-mining operation in Grantville. The reality, Teyssier argues, is that with the mining grounds, a golf course, and Mission Trails Regional Park, 65 percent of the proposed redevelopment area is not urbanized. "On this fact alone," writes Teyssier, "the study area does not meet the criteria for urbanization and therefore cannot be considered as a redevelopment area."

At further issue between the Grantville Property and the Business Owners Association and Jim Madaffer is the role of lot sizes and traffic congestion. Anyone driving along Mission Gorge Road before it reaches Friars Road is aware of traffic congestion. Teyssier and Bernard insist that redevelopment is already causing congestion in the area. They're referring to the recent building of Home Depot and Sav-on Drug stores right off the intersection of Mission Gorge and Interstate 8. Madaffer, speaking at the March 30 city-council meeting, implied that the redevelopment plan would eventually improve traffic conditions.

Regarding lot sizes, Madaffer contends that small parcels of land make economic growth in an area more difficult and contribute to physical blighting. But on his website, Teyssier writes, "A simple visual review of the proposed study area shows a large variety of parcel sizes, none of them being so ill-configured that [they] would constitute blight and prevent proper development." He also points out that Grantville is already "a very viable economic force."

"Redevelopment proponents minimize our concerns," says Teyssier. "They say that eminent domain is a last resort." They also maintain, he says, that it is not their intention to condemn properties. But a new Grantville redevelopment district may do it anyway. "And that threat of condemnation hanging over the owners' heads is intimidating," says Teyssier.

At the March 30 city council meeting, Teyssier gave a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation, and Ken Bernard spoke for two and a half minutes against the Grantville redevelopment plan. Afterward the council voted nine to nothing in favor of studying it further. "That's what happens," says Bernard, "anytime you have a councilman get behind a plan without consulting beforehand with the people the plan is going to affect."